Ashmolean Museum

Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum is the country’s oldest public museum and home to one of the most important collections of art and archaeology to be found anywhere.

The collections span the civilisations of east and west, charting the aspirations of humankind from the Neolithic era to the present day. Among its treasures are the world's largest collection of Raphael drawings, the most important collection of pre-Dynastic Egyptian material in Europe, the only great Minoan collection in Britain, the finest Anglo-Saxon collections outside the British Museum and the foremost collection of modern Chinese art in the Western world.

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Parking is available next to the Museum on St. Giles

The entire collection of the Ashmolean Museum is a Designated Collection of national importance.

The Ashmolean Museum was founded in 1683, the first institutional museum in Britain, and arguably in Europe. Notable among antiquities are the Egyptian collections, the Classical Greek collections including the ‘Arundel Marbles’ and the Felix Gem, and the Alfred Jewel. Paintings date from early Italian to Pre-Raphaelite and there are outstanding drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo. The arts of China, Japan, South East Asia and Islam are well represented, as are Maiolica, Renaissance bronzes and numismatics.

Collection details

Key artists and exhibits

Exhibition details are listed below, you may need to scroll down to see them all.

Exhibition (temporary)

From Palace to Studio: Chinese Women Artists, 1900 to the present

10 March — 27 September 2015 *on now

At the beginning of the 20th century, the palace retainers of China’s Empress Dowager Cixi included a ‘ghost painter’. This accomplished female artist was tasked with producing paintings in the Empress’s name, and only rarely signed her own works.

This exhibition begins with one of her paintings and goes on to document the emergence through the 20th century of female painters as independent artists with their own incomes, ateliers and international reputations.

Suitable for

Website

Great British Drawings

26 March — 31 August 2015 *on now

The collection of British drawings and watercolours in the Ashmolean is one of the largest and most important in the world. Great British Drawings shows more than one hundred works by some of the country’s greatest artists, to trace the history of drawing in Britain. Many of the drawings are shown for the first time in public.

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Website

An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, artist in the age of Jane Austen

16 July — 4 October 2015 *on now

The work of Adam Buck, Regency portrait and miniature painter, provides a fascinating insight into the faces and fashions of this time. Buck’s portraits of The Royals, landowners, Serving Officers and society hostesses, dressed in white muslin, seated or standing in fashionable interiors, brings the world of Jane Austen vividly to life. Jane Austen enthusiasts know Adam Buck’s work better than most.

Suitable for

Admission

£6 Full Price with Donation for Gift Aid Purposes*£5 Concessions with Donation for Gift Aid Purposes*

£5 Standard Full Price£4 Standard Concessions

£2.50 12-17 years & Art Fund Members

Website

An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, artist in the age of Jane Austen

16 July — 11 October 2015 *on now

The work of Adam Buck, Regency portrait and miniature painter, provides a fascinating insight into the faces and fashions of this time. Buck’s portraits of The Royals, landowners, Serving Officers and society hostesses, dressed in white muslin, seated or standing in fashionable interiors, brings the world of Jane Austen vividly to life. Jane Austen enthusiasts know Adam Buck’s work better than most.

Website

Drawing in Venice: Titian to Canaletto

15 October 2015 — 10 January 2016

Featuring a hundred drawings from the Uffizi, the Ashmolean, and Christ Church, Oxford, Drawing in Venice is a ground-breaking exhibition based on new research.

Venetian art has long been associated with brilliant colours and free brushwork, but drawing has been written out of its history. This exhibition highlights the significance of drawing as a concept and as a practice in the artistic life of Venice. It reveals the variety of aims, purposes and techniques in drawing from Bellini, Titian and Tintoretto to Tiepolo and Canaletto. Many of the works on loan to the exhibition have not been seen since the 1950s.

Drawing in Venice presents new research which traces continuities in Venetian drawing over three centuries, from around 1500 down to the foundation of the first academy of art in Venice in 1750.

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01865 278000

All information is drawn from or provided by the venues themselves and every effort is made to ensure it is correct. Please remember to double check opening hours with the venue concerned before making a special visit.